FBI admits to using surveillance planes above Baltimore protests

The FBI has admitted it had carried out air surveillance of protests in Baltimore, using a secretive fleet of planes. Small aircraft activity in the skies over Baltimore first drew the attention of social media users, who then tracked the planes online.

"During the recent unrest, the FBI provided aircraft to the
Baltimore Police Department for the purpose of providing aerial
imagery of possible criminal activity. The aircraft were
specifically used to assist in providing high-altitude
observation of potential criminal activity to enable rapid
response by police officers on the ground," FBI spokeswoman
Amy Thoreson said in a statement.

She added that the flights “were not there to monitor
lawfully protected first amendment activity, and any FBI aviation
support to a local law enforcement agency must receive high level
approvals.”

Anyone know who has been flying the light plane in circles
above the city for the last few nights?

The flights took place April 28 through May 2, and were
originally discovered by Pete Cimbolic, an aviation enthusiast
from Baltimore, who used public flight data available on
flightradar24.com to find a small propeller plane flying over
West Baltimore in tight arcs. He identified it as a Cessna 182,
according to the Baltimore Sun.

A jet flew above the city in a similar, albeit larger, flight
path on May 2. The Baltimore Sun found a third plane, another
prop, that flew above a similar area on April 28, the first night
of the curfew. That plane was a Cessna 206.

The FBI acknowledges the existence of a surveillance fleet, which
it has used since 1938. By 2003, the agency owned over 80
aircraft ‒ including a handful of "Nightstalker"
infrared surveillance planes ‒ but it has obscured the ownership
of the small, unmarked aircraft for operational security reasons,
Ars Technica reported. The FBI rarely posts flight plans.

The three planes spotted over Baltimore are registered to a
collection of aircraft leasing corporations and shell companies,
according to Ars Technica. They were linked to the FBI after the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of
Information Act request with the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency and
US Marshals Service seeking information “about these
mysterious flights.”

The ACLU and civil libertarians were concerned that the planes
could carry controversial electronic eavesdropping equipment,
such as the “StingRay” tool that mimics cell phone
towers. StingRay has been employed by the Baltimore Police Department more 4,000 times
since 2007. The US Marshals Service has a version of the
technology mounted on aircraft, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“These are not your parents’ surveillance aircraft,” Jay
Stanley, an ACLU analyst, said in a statement. “Today, planes
can carry new surveillance technologies, like cellphone trackers
and high-resolution cameras that can follow the movements of many
people at once.

“These are not the kinds of things that law enforcement
should be using in secret.”

It’s not the first time Baltimore has been the target of
surveillance planes, either. In 2008, a company that equips
aircraft with surveillance equipment ran a brief operation above
the city, Persistent Surveillance Systems President Ross McNutt
told the Baltimore Sun.

“We watched ... nearly all of the East and South East Police
Districts and witnessed shooting and a range of other crimes
during our short operation,” McNutt wrote in an email.
“We had centered out of the Johns Hopkins medical center and
fed the live data into the Police Command Center downtown.”

The FBI aircraft were used to capture images and help coordinate
the police response to unrest in the city, which broke out into
riots on April 27, the day of the funeral for Freddie Gray, a
25-year-old black man who died in police custody. The violence
exploded after two weeks peaceful protests.